Elisabeth Manente shared her customer service experience with an Etsy store on
TikTok. @elisabethmanente/TikTok
- Elisabeth Manente shared her customer service experience with an Etsy shop on TikTok.
- She received scorn from the store owner when she asked for a refund.
- The store owner, Cleaver and Blade, accused her of being drunk or high in a tantalizing exchange.
This story originally appeared on Business Insider.
A woman’s experience getting a refund from an Etsy store went viral after she shared a rude exchange on TikTok.
In the video, which was good for 2.3 million viewsElisabeth Manente is told to “have the day you deserve” by a shop selling candles, who accuse her of shopping drunk or high.
Manente, a model and actor with 11,000 followers, said she ordered a Harry Styles candle from Cleaver And Blade — a pop art shop that sells celebrity mugs, t-shirts and posters in ecclesiastical designs. The candle costs $19.
She said she accidentally bought the wrong one on January 9, realized her mistake the next morning and asked for a refund.
The interaction was immediately hostile and the store approved the refund but complained that it cost them $5 to refund her. Manente apologized and said it was an accident, starting a tantalizing exchange.
“I refunded you and I highly doubt you ordered by mistake, have the day you deserve,” the store said.
Manente sarcastically thanked the store for their customer service, saying she would “see them on TikTok,” sparking another wave of abusive messages.
“Last night, while smoking your peace pipe, you accidentally went through our store and picked out a candle and bought it,” one post reads. “You woke up this morning, sober, and decided ah, better not get that candle… it was an ACCIDENT, so you asked for your money back.”
“Which part doesn’t make sense to you?” the shop continued after Manente answered. “Would you like me to grab my dancing shoes and make you a TikTok to help you understand?”
@elisabethmanente I love @Etsy but WTF?! This is not okay. #green screen #fyp #DoritosTriangleTryout #customer service issues #etsy #foryourpage ♬ Elevator Music – Bohoman
Manente told Insider that she assumed the person who wrote to her was a teenager.
“I’m like, there’s no way an adult could talk to me like that,” she said. “The peace pipe part, where they implied I was under the influence, that’s what kind of threw me off. That’s just completely inappropriate.”
Manente posted her TikTok on January 11. Later, the owner of the store, Vladimir Costa, posted a comment titled “the melodrama of St. Elizabeth, the spectator of Karen tears.”
In it, he accused Manente of a backlash against the store. He also said he was going to donate $5 from every sale to a local New Orleans women’s shelter. That message has since been removed.
“You said you couldn’t afford the $5 refund, and now you’re going to donate $5 to a women’s shelter?” said Manente. “That didn’t sit well with people or me because I’m like, well, I’m a woman, women end up in these shelters because of verbally abusive men.”
The Offensive Harry Styles Candle. CleaverandBlade/Etsy
In a lengthy written statement to Insider, Costa admitted his response to Manente was “snappy and sarcastic” but also accused her of “weaponizing social media”.
“Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google, Twitter, FB and now TikTok are being used as weapons by consumers to get what they deserve,” he said. “Small businesses are walking on eggshells and losing control of their profit line for fear they won’t end up with bad reviews.”
Costa said he still didn’t believe the purchase was an accident.
“We’re not a big company like Amazon and Wal-Mart,” he said. “We really believe that people like Elisabeth should know that we don’t operate in the same margins or with the immensely large budgets as them.”
Costa also sent Insider screenshots of some threatening messages he’d received from other people, including one that read “kill yourself.”
Manente said she didn’t post the video to get any sort of reaction, but to prevent other people from being treated the same way.
